Patty shook her head.
"Then, clear out!" cried the Captain, and with an oath he went into the house and pulled the latch-string in. The latch-string was the symbol of hospitality. To say that "the latch-string was out" was to open your door to a friend; to pull it in was the most significant and inhospitable act Lumsden could perform. For when the latch-string is in, the door is locked. The daughter was not only to be a daughter no longer, she was now an enemy at whose approach the latch-string was withdrawn.
Patty was full of natural affection. She turned away to seek a home. Where? She walked aimlessly down the road at first. She had but one thought as she receded from the old house that had been her home from infancy——
The latch-string was drawn in.
CHAPTER XXV.
ANN ELIZA.
How shall I make you understand this book, reader of mine, who never knew the influences that surrounded a Methodist of the old sort. Up to this point I have walked by faith; I could not see how the present generation could be made to comprehend the earnestness of their grandfathers. But I have hoped that, none the less, they might dimly perceive the possibility of a religious fervor that was as a fire in the bones.
But now?
You have never been a young Methodist preacher of the olden time. You never had over you a presiding elder who held your fate in his hands; who, more than that, was the man appointed by the church to be your godly counsellor. In the olden time especially, presiding elders were generally leaders of men, the best and greatest men that the early Methodist ministry afforded; greatest in the qualities most prized in ecclesiastical organization—practical shrewdness, executive force, and a piety of unction and lustre. How shall I make you understand the weight which the words of such a man had when he thought it needful to counsel or admonish a young preacher?
Our old friend Magruder, having shown his value as an organizer, had been made an "elder," and just now he thought it his duty to have a solemn conversation with the "preacher-in-charge" of Jenkinsville circuit, upon matters of great delicacy. Magruder was not a man of nice perceptions, and he was dimly conscious of his own unfitness for the task before him. It was on the Saturday of a quarterly meeting. He had said to the "preacher-in-charge" that he would like to have a word with him, and they were walking side by side through the woods. Neither of them looked at the other. The "elder" was trying in vain to think of a point at which to begin; the young preacher was wondering what the elder would say.